XXV 
NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS 
431 
never travel without an accompaniment of at least 
four or five well-armed men, their lives being in 
continual jeopardy from such denunciations. 
I have never been so fortunate as to see a 
genuine paye at work. Among the civilised Indians 
the Christian padre has supplanted the pagan paye, 
who has besides been discountenanced and perse- 
cuted by the civil authorities ; so that if any now 
exist, he must exercise his office in secret. With 
the native and still unchristianised tribes I have for 
the most part held only passing intercourse during 
some of my voyages. Once I lived for seven 
months at a time among them, on the river Uaupes, 
but even there I failed to catch a paye. When I 
was exploring the Jauarite cataracts on that river, 
and was the guest of Uiaca, the venerable chief of 
the Tucano nation, news came to the malloca one 
afternoon that a famous paye, from a long way up 
river, would arrive that night and remain until next 
day, and I congratulated myself on so fine a 
chance of pfettingf to know some of the secrets of 
his "medicine." He did not reach the port until 
10 P.M., and when he learnt that there was a white 
paye (meaning myself) in the village, he and his 
attendants immediately threw back into the canoe 
his goods, which they had begun to disembark, 
and resumed their dangerous voyage down the river 
in the night-time. I was told he had with him 
several palm-leaf boxes, containing his apparatus. 
(There is a similar box now in the Kew Museum, 
sent by me from the Uaupes.) I could only regret 
that his dread of a supposed rival had prevented 
the interview which to me would have been full of 
interest ; the more so as I was prepared to barter 
